


Something New

by DameRuth



Series: Flowers [5]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alien Biology, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:02:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24688828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DameRuth/pseuds/DameRuth
Summary: Rose studies the new Doctor, comparing and contrasting, and finds something neither of them expect.[Continuing the Teaspoon imports, originally posted 2009.01.01.]
Relationships: Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler
Series: Flowers [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/14017
Comments: 3
Kudos: 34





	Something New

**Author's Note:**

> A fluffy little post-regeneration scene from the Flowers!verse which has been kicking around in my head for a while; since I wanted to get *something* up while it was still 2008 PST, as a New Year's celebration piece, and since the dialogue in the last chapters of both "Second Opinion" and "Human Things" needs a little more polishing to be Just Right, I decided to pull this off the mental shelf, give it a dusting, and write it up.

Rose sat on the jump seat, legs pulled up and arms around her knees, watching the new Doctor fussing over the TARDIS's controls. He was fixing the last of the minor damage caused by having a panel forcibly ripped open. He hadn't given her a tongue-lashing for the way she'd treated his precious ship, or told her she'd been a stupid ape for doing whatever it was she'd done during the confusing blur of light and song that was her last memory of the Game Station.  
  
She wished he would. Then he'd seem more like himself than this airy, charming, pretty stranger.  
  
Oh, she knew he was the Doctor, all right. He remembered things nobody else could, and she'd changed him out of his old clothes into Howard's loaned jim-jams (after forcibly shooing Jackie and Mickey from the room). He was definitely all Time Lord where it counted. Even more telling, the TARDIS was allowing his ministrations, and the timeship was very selective. Rose vividly remembered Adam receiving a stout electric shock when his fingers had strayed to the console during his only trip with them.  
  
But it was still hard to _believe_ he was the Doctor. Her Doctor.  
  
"There!" he announced, slipping the sonic screwdriver back into the breast pocket of a suit his former self wouldn't have been caught dead wearing . . . though in a way that was what was happening. Strange but true. "That's the last of it!" He looked at Rose and grinned, bright as a sunny day, dusting his hands theatrically. "We'll be ready to go, soon as you pack the last of that stuff you were talking about."  
  
He circled around the faceted control panel to stand before Rose, slipping his hands into his pockets, still smiling. Where before his movements had been full of restrained power, now they were light and graceful. His slender build and long limbs gave him a gangly look that was deceptive. She'd expect him to trip over his own feet, but he never did.  
  
Rose smiled back, partly from politeness, partly because it was hard not to be caught up by his enthusiasm, and mostly because she was genuinely learning to like this new Doctor. She just wondered if she'd ever be able to stop comparing him to the man he'd been.  
  
"I've already thought of the perfect place," he continued. "You'll love it there, and I know a spot with a gorgeous view . . ."  
  
 _I'd rather go see Jack,_ a small, traitorous voice said in the back of her head. She'd already asked and been put off with a casual, "Oh, I expect he's plenty busy now, doesn't need us dropping in on him. Lots to do, rebuilding."  
  
For the moment, she was making herself believe that. She was very well aware that even her beloved first Doctor could and did lie to her, usually for what he considered her protection. But she wanted badly to trust this young man in brown, so she didn't quite dare to let herself doubt him in anything. Not yet.  
  
"Can't wait," she said and meant it, even if it wasn't the whole of her feelings. She shifted in preparation to stand, and the Doctor politely stepped to the side to let her. That was when she saw it, and only because she was still looking up into the Doctor's eyes, trying to hold the connection between them and convince herself it was real.  
  
She frowned, coming to her feet and cocking her head. "What was that?" she asked.  
  
Expressive eyebrows went up. "What was what?" the Doctor asked, in reasonable confusion.  
  
"In your eye," Rose said. "That didn't look like a reflection." She reached up as the Doctor's expression went faintly alarmed -- not at her gesture, but her cryptic words.  
  
Almost without thinking, she caught his chin in her fingertips, curiosity removing her lingering hesitation about touching his new body. He quieted immediately at her touch, expression calming, eyes dark and steady, meeting hers without awkwardness. Smiling slightly, with perfect trust (and in a silence that she was starting to suspect was even more unusual for the new him than the old), he let her guide his head side to side, then slightly up and down . . .  
  
The irises of his eyes were black, then chocolate brown as the dim light of the control room caught them, the pupil contracting slightly, just as a human's would. Rose was about to decide she'd imagined it when she saw it again -- the flash of nearly metallic gold.  
  
"There!" she said, catching her tongue between her teeth in concentration as she adjusted the Doctor's head again, ever so slightly, and was rewarded with the flare of of a vivid, hidden pattern: concentric circles and spirals and whorls of exquisite delicacy, threads of gold and copper thinner and finer than any human hair, winding through the Doctor's irises. It reminded Rose of her mum's tiger's-eye necklace, only more subtle.  
  
The Doctor's eyebrows were rising again, but his voice was amused. "I hope I'm not getting a sty. That would be an unpleasant first, so soon in the game."  
  
"No, it's not that, s'weird, you've got all these lines and circles in your eyes, but the light has to be just right," Rose said, waggling his chin gently side-to-side to see the gold appear and disappear.  
  
"Really?" The Doctor grinned, one of his wide, childlike grins of sheer delight. That expression, like his trust of her, hadn't changed in the least. "Brilliant! I have to see!" He pulled his head out of her grasp, but made up for it by grabbing her hand in his and towing her in the direction of the nearest mirror. They ended up in the small, unassuming loo just off of the control room.  
  
His face a few inches away from the mirror over the sink, the Doctor tilted his head this way and that while Rose watched over her shoulder and bit her lower lip, resisting the impulse to grab his head and start moving it around again. After a little under a minute, the Doctor froze, jaw dropping in an absent-minded, open-mouthed smile.  
  
"There!" he said in a triumphant tone. Then, more warmly. "Would you look at that. The light wasn't right in the wardrobe room, before. I haven't seen that in the mirror in _ages_ . . ."  
  
"What is it?" Rose asked, dying to know. "You didn't have anything like it before. Not that I saw, anyway."  
  
The Doctor tilted his head side to side, tongue curling up to touch the back of his front teeth as, like Rose, he watched the effect appear and disappear with the slightest change in angle. "It's called eye-writing -- well, that's the rough translation -- and it's rare. Maybe one out of every three bodies, and that's if you're lucky. It's considered . . ." his eyelids drooped slightly as he glanced sidelong at Rose and assumed an exaggeratedly seductive expression, somewhat ruined by the way his mouth remained open, " . . . verrry attractive."  
  
Rose bumped him with her shoulder to show what she thought of his vamping, given how pointless it was between their species. "It's pretty," she admitted, then giggled as a thought struck her, hearing it spoken in her mind by her first Doctor's dry voice. "Pretty eyes for a pretty boy." She laughed outright at the new Doctor's indignant sputter as he turned to face her fully.  
  
"You've spent too much time around me -- the old me," he said, mock-offended. "We'll have to work on civilizing you a bit more, now."  
  
"What, this coming from Mr. Rude-and-Not-Ginger himself?" Rose shot back, before changing the subject. "'Eye-writing.' It does look like all those post-its you leave everywhere. What's it say?"  
  
"Well, nothing," the Doctor said, dropping his indignation with mercurial speed. He shrugged. "It's not really writing. Just a coincidence."  
  
Rose could feel another grin coming on. "So, what, it's just nonsense? You've got gibberish reflected in your eyes? Now that's scary, if probably accurate . . ."  
  
"Oi!" he exclaimed. "Don 't you start! Your eyes are full of little M's and N's and W's, and they're just as gibberish as anything in mine!" He drew himself up to his full height, but didn't manage to look particularly imposing -- even less so when Rose poked him in the stomach and he folded over with a surprised, reflexive _whuff._ She followed the poke immediately with a quick, affectionate hug.  
  
"Don't get bent out of shape," she told him, letting him go. "I said it was pretty. I was just taking the piss."  
  
"Language!" the Doctor said, but he sounded more cheerful than chiding. "Ready to go get the rest of your clothes and say goodbye to Ricky . . ."  
  
"Mickey."  
  
". . . what's-his-name and your mum?"  
  
"Yeah," she said, and was pleasantly surprised to find how easily the word slipped out. Maybe, just maybe she was getting used to the new Doctor.  
  
Her new Doctor.  
  
When they left the TARDIS together, heading for Jackie's flat, her hand reached for his without conscious thought, warm skin against cool, new and old blended together for a fresh beginning.

* * *

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.  
  
This story archived at <http://www.whofic.com/viewstory.php?sid=28124>


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